Although lightning has a lot of energy and is renewable, it is unpredictable and requires huge batteries and capacitors. The infrastructure required to support energy harvesting is also costly and outweighs the benefits. It is better to focus on accessible sources of alternative energy like sunlight, wind, and water.
It is theoretically possible to store and harness electricity from lightning, and several proposals have been made to show how this could be done. However, there are a number of reasons which make these proposals unworkable. Lightning simply isn’t a good source of energy, and there are numerous alternatives that are safer, less energy intensive, more effective, and readily available. In other words, just because humans can potentially and in theory highly store electricity from lightning doesn’t mean they should.
On the surface, lightning appears to have great potential as an energy source. It is fully renewable, which is a definite advantage, and is readily available in some regions of the world. Also, lightning has a lot of energy; a single bolt of lightning can power 150 million light bulbs. The idea of harnessing so much energy and storing it is immensely appealing.
There are a number of problems with trying to harness lightning’s massive energy. The first is that lightning is highly unpredictable. There’s no way to know exactly where and when lightning will strike, so it would be hard to find a place to turn into a lightning-processing facility to produce power. Lightning also delivers its energy all at once, which would require huge batteries and capacitors. Otherwise, the energy would simply blow up all the systems set up to capture it.
The potential instability in the electricity supply from lightning strikes is far less of a concern than the infrastructure that would be required to support the energy harvesting process. Lightning is so powerful that it would overload all but the most sophisticated and heavy systems, and the wisdom of building and installing such a system would be questionable if it could only harvest the energy from a few lightning strikes a year. Even in areas where lightning is frequent, the cost of the system would likely outweigh the benefit of getting electricity from lightning.
Humans may at some point develop a system that can cheaply and effectively collect and store electricity from lightning. Technological innovation is a natural part of human societies and progress is constantly being made. 18th century men would have been amazed at things developed in the 19th century, for example. However, such a development is likely to occur in the distant future, making it more important to focus on accessible sources of alternative energy such as sunlight, wind and water.
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